Monkeypox’s Biggest Mystery: It Suddenly Appeared In Labs From 1958 Onwards Without Explanation
And the origin source still remains unknown.
It’s no secret that monkeypox was first discovered in laboratory monkeys in Denmark in 1958. But the big question is, how did the laboratory monkeys get monkeypox in the first place?
Monkeypox has triggered a global outbreak of over 60,000 cases in more than 100 countries as of September 2022. As with Covid-19, understanding the disease’s origin is key to preventing the next one. But, as with Covid-19, we still don’t know the true origin of monkeypox.
So, let’s see what we know and don’t know about monkeypox’s origin.
How monkeypox was discovered in 1958
In a 1959 paper, Magnus et al. at Statens Serum Institut, a research institute in Denmark, admitted that “During the summer and fall of 1958 two outbreaks of a non-fatal pox-like disease in cynomolgus monkeys have been observed in the monkey colony in this institute.”
Back then, this institute received monkeys from Singapore used for research purposes. The institute had an animal house accommodating 25–50 monkeys in their main building and another larger house housing 100–150 monkeys in another building about…
